Glad you came back Tachi, and that you enjoyed the game. Excellent analysis as usual.

Yeah, FXAA can be very effective when used well; Nano Assault Neo and Splinter Cell Blacklist come to mind, for example. However, these may have been customized solutions.

Considering the overhead though, I don't think more expensive AA methods were ever on the cards for a game like XCX. Nintendo tends to favour low cost anti-aliasing or none at all, anyway. (Though again, cheap doesn't necessarily mean bad; Mario 3D World, Captain Toad, New Super Mario Bros U, and Wind Waker HD looked nice and clean for the most part)

Well I'm not sure how to articulate it, but something about the way this game was anticipated as a true showcase of the Wii U's potential only for Tachi to mention that due to a poorly optimized engine the game isn't performing nearly as well as it could be is pretty funny to me. People have been going nuts over the scale and accepting some graphical sacrifices here and there, and it turns out a lot of those sacrifices weren't really necessary from a system resource perspective. From a development/budget/deadline perspective of course something had to give.

Basically, the Wii U can do better, and Monolith Soft can do better with the hardware. Tachi even mentioned at some point that with this experience under their belt, their next game should be a real looker.

If I was feeling particularly bold I might use this analysis to suggest that the Wii U is more than powerful enough for Nintendo's developers this generation, and that their next-gen console really doesn't have to represent a massive upgrade. Wii U --> next console could resemble GameCube --> Wii on that front and Nintendo's first-party studios would want for nothing. Even their most hardcore-focused studios aren't maxing out the Wii U this gen. Anyway, that's what I might suggest if I wasn't too tired to back that up.

The end result of Tachi's analysis is that I'm really looking forward to see what EAD 3 can cook up on this machine. Probably not much since it looks like they're still using the same old engine as usual, but they've gotten a lot of mileage out of that engine so it must be pretty flexible. Maybe Retro will have one last hurrah on the system.

I guess we're just a bunch'a jokers.

That´s what I´m expecting. I have the feeling that Retro is going to give us the best WiiU tecnical showcase as they did on GC. It´s just a speculation, but knowing retro and the fact that they have been working on a whole new engine for WiiU, it´s possible.

I´m very happy with the work on Xenoblade though. Is not the best they could achieve, but is gorgeous enough and the performance is good.

What's the game to beat? Bayonetta 2?

I guess yes, it is. Bayo 2 is no joke though.

Yeah I hope Retro's next game pushes the Wii U like the Metroid Prime games pushed the GCN and Wii. Tropical Freeze wasn't a technical showcase, awesome game though it was.

Art of Balance.

Subsurface scattering, physically based shading, water simulation and the best textures on the system, all at 60fps with v-sync.

Please... Art of Balance, as good as it looks, and with the effects in use, isn't taxing the Wii U in any way.

Not in terms of memory capacity or CPU load, but I certainly haven't seen anything else on the system with a technical checklist as prodigious.

I'm not even sure there is another Wii U game confirmed to do subsurface scattering and physically based shading, though there could be.

I know you love Shin'en, like... a lot. But you give them way too much credit/merit. Their games have absolutely no scale whatsoever. You appear to me as someone who's very impressionable as long as the developer checks the right effects on that checklist of yours. 

Shin'en are far from being the tech wiz you make them to be. If they'd make a big scale game and managed to incorporate those effects, then that would be impressive. But managing to include them when they do those tiny scale games is no achievment. Even if you want us all to believe otherwise. 

I really don't get why you have such a fixation on that developer, to be frank.

Never once in his posts did he say that, so perhaps read more carefully.  What he said was correct, if you are looking for a tech list of features, Shin'en's games are the ones to look at for the Wii U.  Art of Balance and what we have seen of Fast Racing Neo are quite beyond most other games on the system in terms of pure graphical tech.  So whether you want to believe it or not, he is - objectively and demonstrably - correct.

Now, in my opinion, Art of Balance is only "the game to beat" if you want just a laundry list of tech features.  In terms of technical achievement, I say Bayonetta 2.